All Current Tutorials

The market may be saturated with task management applications, however there is one that has been around for several years that is now beginning to gain some traction thanks to the number of features it offers. TickTick is a cross-platform application that doesn't just organise your tasks. It can store notes, has a built-in Pomodoro timer and even a habit tracking element that helps separate TickTick from competitors. In part one of this two-part series, Lee looks covers the basics of the application: setting up your tasks and lists, recurring tasks, as well as some light configuration options.

Daily Prompt offers a fresh take on building a creative writing habit. Instead of just sending you notifications and pestering you to write like many other apps, you’re given prompts in the form of small writing challenges or images that act as a starting point. This way you never run out of inspiration to write, and can simply focus on being creative. Darcy shows you how it all comes together in this tip.

This is the second part of a two-part series covering some real-life use cases of the Lightning Network.

"The Lightning Network" enables a global payment system that works instantaneously and for little or no cost. With this new technology and infrastructure, we finally have a working method of dealing with micropayments, which are payments of a fraction of a cent that can be sent anywhere around the globe using just the internet and a mobile device. And for the first time, we can even stream money in real time to pay for services as we use them.

In this second part, Don focuses on both trivial and world-changing examples of the Lightning Network in action.

Safari Extensions are extremely popular at the moment, with developers filling the App Store with a wide variety to suit your needs. Apple Mail extensions, however, are more difficult to find. ReplyCube is a solid entry in this space that allows you to create canned (template) emails and access them from the Compose window, making repetitive batch jobs a lot easier. Lee shows you how it all works in this short tip.

"The Lightning Network" is a solution to enable a global payment system that works instantaneously and for little or no cost. With this new technology and infrastructure, we finally have a working method of dealing with micropayments, which are payments of a fraction of a cent that can be sent anywhere around the globe using just the internet and a mobile device. For the first time, we can even stream money in real-time to pay for services as we use them. In the first of this two-part series, Don takes you through the background of this new technology and gives you two examples of the Lightning Network in action.

Managing windows on his Mac is something Lee knows a thing or two about. In this tip, he shares how Keyboard Maestro, Moom (two apps that they've covered previously on ScreenCastsONLINE), and his beloved Stream Deck come together to give Lee a flexible solution for managing where his windows live while he works.

One of the ways you can save your memories is by creating physical books, calendars, and more out of your photos. In Apple Photos, you can create projects using extensions from different companies to do just that. In this tutorial, Allison uses her Mac to explain how to install these extensions from the App Store to make projects, and then takes a closer look at two of them: Mimeo Photos and Motif. For her project, she creates a photo book and walks you through the many options each service offers to make your photo book memorable.

Introduced in macOS Ventura, Stage Manager has had mixed reactions amongst Mac users. While some love it, many can't quite grasp what it's trying to do. Don takes you through the basics of using Stage Manager on macOS and shares some useful tips on how to use it.

Read-it-Later services have been around for a long time. But few are providing any real innovation. Readwise aims to do so by offering a service that not only helps you get more out of what you read, and Readwise Reader provides a fresh take on RSS. Using his iPhone, Mike shows you how to set up both apps. He walks you through the Library and Feed options in Reader, shows you the various ways to send things to it (including YouTube videos), and how your highlights sync to Readwise automatically. This allows you to review information later and help it stick using a variety of tools.

Darcy takes you on a discovery, that of the podcast listening app Pocket Casts, an alternative to Apple's Podcasts which has been around for some time. Darcy focuses on iPhone in this video, and shows you how Pocket Casts can import an existing podcast library, and how it uses folders and filters to organize your shows for easier access. This also gives you a taste of the advanced features offered by Pocket Casts Plus, their subscription model.

Following on from the recent Mastodon tutorial, this update show brings a new announcement from ScreenCastsOnline plus a look at some new innovative clients for iOS and the Mac.

ScreenCastsOnline members can now join a safe, moderated Mastodon instance run by ScreenCastsOnline - you'll find an invitation link in your member profile on the ScreenCastsOnline website. In this episode, Don takes you through accessing the new instance as well as giving optional instructions on how to migrate if you so desire. In addition, Don introduces you to three Mastodon clients: Mastonaut for the Mac along with Ice Cubes and Ivory for iOS.

With a number of established window management utilities already available on macOS, it's always interesting to see another player hit the market and Lasso is a great addition to this space. In this video, Lee runs through the application in detail, including a feature that is unique to Lasso: Global shortcuts.

Do you sometimes wonder if you can get more out of your Mac? In this video, Darcy takes you through the Shortcuts app, which helps you automate repetitive tasks using actions that you can connect in a myriad of ways. Learn how to easily combine PDFs, split screens, rename files, and a lot more. These examples all come from the Gallery, and are a great way to introduce you to Shortcuts without the need to dive deep into actions as you get your first glimpse of the app. Darcy wraps up by showing you how to build a simple shortcut to track a saving goal, using a third-party app's Shortcuts actions.

Diarly is a well designed journaling app that allows users to write, draw and even record audio as a way of keeping a daily journal. Darcy takes you through all the features in this short video, including multiple journals, goals, links, and much more.

As suggested in the weekly newsletter (and subsequently requested by many members) Don demonstrates in this week's show how he has set about configuring his new Mac mini and Apple Studio Display. And rather than trading in his 2017 iMac Pro, he is utilising both machines in his desktop setup and shows you how they’re connected to work together.

Following on from the recent Craft Update show (1225), as promised, Don brings you information on the Craft AI Assistant. This is a tool based on GPT-3 artificial intelligence that "helps you write faster, generate ideas, proofread your work, translate text into any language, summarize documents, and find information contained within your Craft space, in seconds."

In this tip video, Don takes you through some of the standard options as well as exploring some of the extremely powerful features of the built-in Craft AI Assistant. 

Read-it-Later services which allow you to consume articles from various sources, come and go, and very few stand the test of time. One application that has done precisely that is Instapaper. In this video, Lee shows you how to use the iPad version of this cross-platform app. You learn how to create an account, add content from various services and media types, and enjoy some added features, such as Text-to-Speech and Speed Reading.

Quick Look on the Mac is a powerful tool that lets you quickly preview the contents of files without having to open them. It allows you to view documents, images, video and audio, and even plain text files, just by pressing the spacebar. Quick Look also features built-in sharing and preview options, so you can easily share files with colleagues or quickly open them in an appropriate application. With Quick Look, you can view information about the file, such as its size, location, and creation date, without having to open it in another application. Lee guides you through some of these in this short tip video.

Craft is your ultimate writing companion. It's an intuitive, customisable tool that works hard to help you craft any document and keep it organised with ease - perfect for those creative projects!

Lee Garrett originally covered Craft in 2021, not long after receiving an Apple Design award. The application was impressive then, and it's continued to improve and add additional functionality ever since. In this week's tutorial, Don refreshes the basics of Craft on the Mac, focusing on the new features rolled out over the last 24 months.

Context menus are an integral part of macOS, however over time, as more applications are installed, they can become heavy and bloated with lots of different options that often need cleaning up. In this video, Lee shows you some simple tips on how to keep your context menus streamlined and relevant. He also gives you a refresher on how flexible Quick Actions, Share, and Services can be in your everyday workflow on the Mac.